Oxford academics were hugely significant in the translation and production of the King James Bible — celebrating its 400th anniversary this year, after selling more than one billion copies — but I doubt if any of them envisaged the enormous material benefit that their devoted and diligent work would bring to the city.

Archbishop Laud obtained for the University in 1636 the privilege of printing Bibles; but it was not until after the monumentally successful publication of Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion in 1702-4 that Oxford began to emerge as the most prolific of Bible producers — and that happened thanks to the efforts of an entrepreneur called John Baskett who leased the Bible privilege from the University in 1713, the year that the Clarendon Building — for years the home of Oxford University Press — was completed.

But Oxford really hit the big time in Bible printing during the first half of the 19th century. Thousands upon thousands of Bibles (and prayer books too) emanated from the Oxford University Press (OUP) which, by then, had divided itself into two parts: the Learned or Classical Press, and the money spinning Bible Press.

In order to fight its corner in a highly competitive and international business, in which the British and Foreign Bible Society, as major customer, was constantly demanding price cuts, the Press became a joint stock company with 48 shares, of which the University, as “owner partner”, held 24.

The rest of the shares were mainly held by ‘partners,’ who for the most part were master printers who ran the Press. In 1850 alone the University’s share of the Bible profits was £60,000 — much of which, interestingly enough, was used to finance the building of the University Museum —completed in 1860, the year of the great debate between Huxley, arguing for the evolutionists, and Wilberforce for the creationists.

The Press itself had moved from the Clarendon Building to its present Walton Street headquarters in 1830, establishing the Bible Press in the south wing and the Learned Press in the north wing.

And as revenue from Bible sales began to diminish in the later 19th century, offshoots of the New Oxford Dictionary — such as the Concise Oxford, or the Little Oxford — began to earn money instead. Printer to the University Thomas Combe bought the paper mill at Wolvercote in 1855 in order to produce that distinctive, thin Bible paper so many of us remember. He sold it to the OUP in 1872.

Among the academics who played a key role in the original production of the lovely, rolling English prose of the King James Bible in 1611, was John Rainolds (1549-1607). He became the seventh president of Corpus Christi College in 1598 and until his death the translators of the authorised Bible met weekly in his rooms there. He had become a lecturer in Greek at the age of 23.

Altogether 47 scholars, working in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, were involved in the translation. Other notable Oxford scholars involved in the exercise were Henry Savile, Warden of Merton, and Miles Smith of Corpus Christi and Brasenose.

It is ironic, though, that Oxford should play such an important part, and profit so greatly, from the Bible’s translation. After all, the city and university was also home to John Wycliffe (1328-1384), one time master of Balliol, who between 1363 and 1381 lived at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and, famously, produced two translations of the Bible into vernacular English — with the intention of making it available to all.

His writings were banned and indeed burned in Oxford despite many fellow dons having become Lollards, as his followers were called. In 1428, long after his death, and at the command of Pope Martin V, his body was dug up and burned.